Purl SoHo, a Holiday Handmade Cavalcade Sponsor

With the Holiday Handmade Cavalcade just two weeks away, we would like to take time to introduce you to our overall sponsors of our event. The first sponsor we would like to highlight is Purl SoHo,  one of the most well-loved yarn, fabric, and crafts store in New York City.

Purl was first founded in 2002 as a friendly yarn shop where people could gather and share each other's creativity. In 2006, they opened Purl Patchwork a few stores down from Purl, and in 2010 they combined forces and opened a new, larger space in SoHo called Purl SoHo.

Not only does Purl SoHo provide amazing materials for crafters of any age or ability, they also provide hundreds of comprehensive tutorials and projects on their Purl Bee blog in knitting, crocheting, sewing, crafting, and embroidery. Check out the latest crochet journal, Bear's Rainbow Blanket.

Bear's Rainbow Blanket

Some of my favorite posts come from Molly. She develops easy-to-follow tutorials that often produce items that are perfect for gift giving. One of my favorites? These stacking linen pillows, a perfect housewarming gift.

Linen Stacking Pillows with Paige's Cat

If you're new to a specific craft, need a brief reminder about the blanket stitch, or just want to hone your skills, each category of craft on their blog contains tutorials with tons of easy-to-follow photos.

From the long tail cast-on method tutorial

Purl SoHo recently developed their own line of luxury yarns in super soft merino. They come in the brightest and boldest of Purl SoHo's signature colors like Super Pink, Peacock Blue, and Heirloom White. Whatever color you choose, you can be sure it will make a bold statement while also providing maximum warmth and toastiness!

Super Soft Merino by Purl SoHo

If you can't make it to the store, Purl SoHo also has an easy-to-navigate online store. There you can find everything you need for any of the project journals they have on their blog, as well as tons of other essential items!

Many thanks again to Purl SoHo for their support. Be sure to be one of the first 100 people on each day to come to the Holiday Handmade Cavalcade to score one of our great goodie bags. Purl SoHo has contributed fat quarters to the bags, so come early!

What: Holiday Handmade Cavalcade

When: Saturday & Sunday, December 1st and 2nd

Time: 11am - 6pm

Where: The Space, 50 North 3rd Street (between Kent and Wythe), Williamsburg, Brooklyn

More information about our sponsors, goodie bag contributions, our awesome food vendors, and other Cavalcade news are coming up, so stay tuned!

Karina

Windows of Agate

Spring Handmade Cavalcade Coming Soon!

Mark your calendars for Saturday, May 5th, for the much anticipated Spring Handmade Cavalcade! Nearly thirty of the best New York City artisans will be selling jewelry, clothing, toys, paper goods, housewares, and more.

In the next couple of weeks, look out for blog posts from our wonderful sponsors! A special thanks to our overall sponsors, Etsy, Outright.com, Square, and Lion Brand Yarn Company. Each of these companies contribute to the work of handmade artisans in very special ways, and we look forward to highlighting them.

In the meantime, please take note of the event details:

Location: Littlefield, 622 Degraw Street, Brooklyn (between 3rd and 4th Avenue)
Date: Saturday, May 5th
Time: 11am - 5pm


View Larger Map

Karina
Windows of Agate

The Secret to Successfully Blowing Out an Egg

A couple of weeks ago Leslie from Astor Knot posted a wonderful tutorial on the art of Pysanky. After reading through the tutorial, I was curious to try blowing out eggs as I've never done it before, and after doing it I thought I would share some tips with all of you who might want to try it. 

1. First, I found out that it is easier to blow out an egg that is room temperature rather than one right out of the refrigerator. Leave your carton of eggs out for a couple of hours first. Another thing that I discovered is that fresher eggs from healthier chickens have a stronger shell that is less likely to break, so spend the extra dollar or two to get better eggs.

2. To poke the holes in the eggs, I used a couple of needles, one small sharp one and one slightly larger one. Using the smaller needle, I gently poked one hole in each end. Then I used the larger needle to make one of the holes slightly larger. Then, I used the larger needle to stir up the inside of the egg, piercing the egg yolk and scrambling the inside.

3. The next step is blowing out the inside of the egg. You can do this by just blowing using your mouth, but I used one of those runny nose sucking tools designed for babies that came in a baby medical kit. It's much more fun to use this on an egg than on an infant. In this case, the egg doesn't scream bloody murder and look at you with betrayal. I put the sucker thing on top of the smaller hole, then pressed the bulb to push out the insides of the egg through the larger hole on the bottom. Do this as gently as possible so you don't break the egg. Keep repeating the process until nothing else comes out.
*Note: In this project, I used a whole carton of eggs and ended up dividing the egg innards into separate bowls which I then used to cook and bake with. Thankfully my family enjoys eggs!

4. After the egg blowing portion of the activity, my daughters and I set off to paint and decorate our new eggs! We decided to paint versus dying so we could get brighter colors, but I think we'll also do some egg dying later this week. Don't want to deprive the girls of tradition.

5. I poked some glass head needles into the top of an egg carton for the eggs to rest on while they dried.

6. Finally, we ran some brown grocery bags through the paper shredder for a "nest" and settled the newly decorated eggs in the basket. The great thing about blown out eggs is that will last as long as your kids will handle them carefully. In our household, that is about three minutes, but you may have better luck in your home. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Karina

Windows of Agate

How to Make a Checker Set

I've been wanting to make a checkerboard for some time. My older daughter just turned four and is starting to learn how to play games, although we can only do it when my younger daughter (2) is asleep because she likes to collect all the pieces we are playing with and hoard them in her lap. Take a look at the tutorial below, and afterward enjoy the game! (*Note: This tutorial originally posted here.)

How to Make a Checker Set

1. First, make handmade clay by combining 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, and 3/4 cup of water in a medium mixing bowl. Stir until combined, then knead for 10-15 minutes.

2. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inches thick.

3. Using a cookie cutter, cut out 26 pieces (you will need 12 for each side, but we did two extra just in case some get lost under the couch). We made two sets, one with stars and the other with circles. We made the small circular cutter  by cutting a strip of plastic from an old yogurt container and taping into a small loop.

5. Take shapes out and set on baking sheet with the back facing up. Poke a few holes using a toothpick to prevent the pieces from bubbling up.  Bake in the over at 300 degrees until hard, flipping every 20 minutes. It should take about an hour, but it could take longer depending on how thick your pieces are.

6. While baking, make the checkerboard. I used white fabric as the base, cutting two pieces to 17x17 inches. I also made a square of batting at 16x16 inches. On one side of one piece of white fabric, I used a ruler and a fabric pencil to draw out a board. First I drew lines 1/2 inch in on each side, and then used those lines as a starting point to draw 2x2 inch squares. That should give you eight rows of squares across and eight rows of squares up and down; sixty-four squares total. Then I cut out thirty-two 2x2 inch squares of colored fabric. I used my sewing machine to sew the colored fabric in a checkerboard pattern, making sure to line the pieces up with the lines I had drawn. Once I sewed all the squares in place, I put the two white fabrics with right sides facing in (so the fabric squares are facing in toward the other piece of white fabric) and then put the batting on top. I stitched all around the three pieces of fabric (two white pieces of fabric and one piece of batting) using a 1/2 inch seam allowance, leaving a 2 inch gap at the end. I turned the piece inside out so the batting was tucked on the inside and the checkerboard pattern was facing out. I pressed the seams flat, then sewed around the entire board again. 

7. Back to the checker pieces! Once they are out of the oven and cool, paint them using acrylic or poster paints. Paint 12 (or thirteen in our case) in one color and the other 12 in a contrasting color. Kaela painted her round pieces and I painted the star pieces. 

8. Let dry completely.

9. Get ready to play!

I found a useful set of simple checker rules at this website, although I'm sure if you dig around you will find other great resources. Enjoy!

Karina
Windows of Agate

Handmade Gifts for Teachers

Only a couple more weeks before the 3rd Annual Holiday Handmade Cavalcade, and as you put together your shopping lists don't forget some of the most important people in your child's life... teachers! My daughter just started preschool this year, so I'm searching for some handmade gifts that will show her teachers how wonderful I think they are. Here are some things that I am eyeing...

Lampwork Heart Pendant by A Studio By The Sea

Jody's beautiful lamp work creates wonderful swirls of color that is sure to please the most cheerful preschool teacher.

Recycled Tie Bag by Groundsel

Teachers are experts at making something incredible out of recycled materials. How better to acknowledge their resourcefulness than this beautiful handbag made out of a tie?

Colony Collapse Read Bee Necklace by JTopolski
Science teachers are sure to love this colony collapse necklace, not only stylish but educational.

Vintage 1960s Dress Pattern by luckx4
This fun dress pattern is a perfect gift for that fashionable teacher.

We Move Mountains Print by VirginiaKraljevic
Remind your teacher of just how valuable they are with this original print.

Eco Friendly Hemp Blend and Leather Handle Tote Bag by SansMap
Give your teacher the gift of a sophisticated and practical bag! Perfect for toting around graded papers and lessons in style.

The gift ideas don't end there. For more ideas before the big shopping day, check out the vendor page of the Holiday Handmade Cavalcade website. You'll be inspired!

Karina

www.WindowsOfAgate.etsy.com

Ice Cream! Get Your Ice Cream!

There is nothing better than a nice, delicious, ice cream cone in the summer. Or the autumn. Or really, anytime. Last week, my two daughters and I decided to make fake ice cream to include in our food play; read more to find out how we did it.

Crafting with Kids: Making Turtles with Egg Cartons

Egg cartons are a great crafty material. We love using them to mix paints, and a couple of months ago we decided to make one of our favorite animals: turtles. This is a super easy, super cute little craft made from egg cartons, tissue paper, googly eyes, feathers, and paint. We cut up the egg carton so each cup was an individual piece, then decorated the outside with tissue paper, paints, and feathers. Then I took scraps of cardboard that I had saved from a shipping box, traced around the lid of the egg carton, added a head and tail, and then cut out the cardboard and stapled it to the corners of the cup. Then we painted the cardboard and glued on some googly eyes. 

A great book to pair this activity with is Turtles in My Sandbox by Jennifer Keats Curtis. It's a sweet story about a pregnant turtle that mistakenly lays her eggs in a little girl's sandbox instead of on the beach. The little girl and her mother end up helping the turtles as they grow to full size and then release them into the wild. After reading the book, my girls ended up putting the turtles they made into a "tank" (empty shoebox) and fed them tiny pieces of newspaper and paperclips.

Karina
Windows of Agate

How to Make Egg Shakers

One of my favorite parts of parenting is inventing strange crafts out of random materials that engage my two kids for the longest amount of time for the least amount of money. The idea for this project came about from broken eggshells. I've been washing and saving eggshells for the last few months to crush and add to my garden as well as to compost. Then I realized that if you keep the two eggs halves they almost fit perfectly back together. Which made me think of the plastic egg shakers that are all the rage during preschool music classes and sing-a-longs. Which made me think what a brilliant idea someone had to make those plastic egg shakers. Which made me think that someone is making a lot of money off of that idea.

And you see how twisted and random my thoughts can be. Sometimes these thoughts turn to something productive, like developing a new hobby (gardening, recycling old clothes into new clothes, composting). Other times... well, let's just say sometimes my time can be better spent sleeping.

Back to the original point of this post, which began with me staring at half broken eggshells and feeling like they could be something more. I loved the way they fit back together after being broken, so I thought we could make real egg shakers minus the plastic. This turned out to be a multi-day process with the drying times factored it, but it was really sort of fun. So here's how to do it.

1. Clean your eggshells thoroughly and lay them out to dry.

2. Fill partially with different dried beans. We used lentils, split peas, and black beans.

3. Apply a thin layer of glue along the rim of the eggshell and fit the other side snugly on top, making sure it matches up perfectly.

4. Let dry for a few hours or overnight.

5. Cut thin strips of newspaper, about .5 inches by 2 inches, for the paper mache. Make a paste from flour and water (boil half a cup of water on the stove and whisk in a heaping tablespoon of flour - simmer lightly for a minute and then let cool). Dip paper in paste or use a paintbrush to apply the paste on the egg and cover the eggs with a few layers of newspaper and paper mache paste.

6. Let dry overnight. (Lay them on the egg cartons and make sure to rotate them so the entire egg dries.)

8. Use poster or acrylic paints to add color to your egg shakers.

9. Do a lesson on color mixing by only starting out with red, yellow, blue and white. Use the egg carton to mix colors (yellow + blue = green, red + blue = purple, red + white = pink, etc). 

10. Paint!

11. Let dry and then let the musicians loose on the shakers! I find the sound of beans on eggshells really soothing and much more pleasant than the plastic variety. Store the egg shakers in the dried out egg carton and also use in food play.